Encapsulated-lens retroreflective sheeting offers bright retroreflection and maintains that reflection even when wet with water. Such sheeting has been provided in flexible fabric supported forms for application to garments to make pedestrians wearing the garments more visible at night to drivers of approaching vehicles. Because the sheeting incorporates a supporting fabric it can be easily sewn or adhered or otherwise incorporated into a garment.
However, existing forms of fabric-supported encapsulated-lens sheeting have a number of disadvantages. Addition of a supporting fabric, typically accomplished by use of pressure-sensitive adhesive to adhere the fabric to the bottom surface of the sheeting, has produced a rather thick product which protrudes too far from the surface of a garment to which it is added, and unduly stiffens the garment. Also the steps of coating a pressure-sensitive adhesive and lamination of a fabric into the sheeting by means of the adhesive add to the cost of manufacture. Further, especially under the pressures that develop when the sheeting is wound into a storage roll, the adhesive can ooze through the fabric so as to cause adhesion between adjacent windings in the storage roll and cause contamination of the exterior surface of the sheeting.